With the publication and popularization of Lyotard=92s The Post-ModernCondition in 1979 came a contradictorily tangible articulation of acontemporary social ethos. Whether we in 2005 read postmodernism as anextension of modernism, or a reaction to it, depends on where we locateourselves=97what and how we read. Here in Canada, there are those who follo=wthe loping trajectory of Charles G.D. Roberts who writes that =93with us, i=t[is] not revolution, but evolution,=94 and there are those devoutKroetsch-ites who believe that Canadian writers skipped directly fromVictorianism to postmodernism. But where are we now? Has postmodernismbeen exhausted by a parasitic branch of deconstruction? Are we inpost-post-modernity, and if so, what is the framework/fragmentation bywhich we may mark our location? This panel calls for papers whichinvestigate these questions by probing the subcutaneous layer ofliterature, theory, and criticism. What lies beyond text and texts? Are wesimply regurgitating the now-dated mission statements of postmodernism byextending it, or are we somehow reacting to it?

Questions and topics could include, but are not limited to:

-the articulation of a post-post-modernity-the return to realism-deconstruction as finite or infinite-where is now?-hypertextuality-re/turning to the past-the limits of literature and criticism

Papers should be between 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts are due 25January, 2006. The conference will be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary in Calgary, AB, Canada. Please submit 250-wordabstracts to: Owen Percy odfpercy_at_ucalgary.ca

Canadian Literature: A Bush Garden Gone to Weed

Canadian literary theorists such as Northrop Frye traditionally definedCanadian literature in relation to Canadian writers=92 representations ofnature and our landscapes: E.J. Pratt=92s crashing seas of =93tide and windand crag;=94 Sinclair Ross=92s =93implacability of snow-swept earth,=94 Geo=rgeEliot Clarke=92s =93cabals of rock, wreckage, sobs of wet death,=94 or Lorn=aCrozier=92s =93rows of ripened barley.=94 Such representations of nature a=ndlandscape supported a concept for a central unifying force in CanadianLiterature. Canadian writers continue to engage in defining character,action, and conflict through images of water, weather, vegetation, theanimal, or the geological.

This panel will address issues such as these within the context of selectCanadian fiction writers and poets.

Possible paper topics include:=09contemporary ecocritical approaches to nature and landscape=09representations of nature and landscape vis-=E0-vis postmodernis=m=09ecocriticism in Canadian poetry=09ecocriticism in Canadian fiction=09intersections between regionalism and ecocriticism in Canadianliterature=09landscape and the construction of the Canadian national identity

Please submit paper proposals or full papers, along with a 50 word bio, toDiane Guichon d.guichon_at_shaw.ca Please keep in mind that presentationsshould be between 15 and 20 minutes.

Creative Non-Fiction: The Politics and Future

As a relatively new genre distinction, creative non-fiction has bothproduced and defied a multitude of definitions. It is also a genregaining popularity and critical attention. But its very proliferationprovokes questions of what this genre should look like, who writes in itand why, what causes does it best address, and what are its pitfalls andstrengths. At heart, creative non-fiction seeks to be transparent anddepoliticized, but in reality, there are complicated racial, gender andidentity politics being played out on its terrain.

This panel calls for papers that either address the genre of creativenon-fiction or consider a work of creative non-fiction in relation to theabove concerns.

Possible paper topics may include:=09authority and authenticity=09who has the right to speak using the medium of creative non-fict=ion=09representation and portrayals of history and subjectivity increative non-fiction=09the relationship of creative non-fiction to narrative and oralit=y=09explorations of the liminal status of creative non-fiction=09defining creative non-fiction as a genre

Please submit paper proposals or full papers, along with a 50 word bio, toKathryn Willms at knwillms_at_ucalgary.ca Please keep in mind thatpresentations should be between 15 and 20 minutes.

Literature, Politics, and the Future: The Role of Creative writing

In recent history, much of the discourse in the social sciences has soughtto undo, redefine, and challenge the institutional and intellectualboundaries of the study of art, culture, politics, and other forms ofhuman interaction. In an attempt to follow the complex network of powerrelations, which structure our secular and intellectual lives, academicstudies have crossed traditional disciplinary boundaries to developtheoretical approaches that account for a wide array of material evidence. Similarly, creative writing continues to evolve as a medium of social andpolitical critique.

The University of Calgary=92s English Graduate Conference is solicitingcreative panel proposals for its upcoming interdisciplinary conference onLanguage and Literature, which is to be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary. The creative panel, held in conjunction with theconference's critical panels, will take place in the evening with a roundtable discussion following the presentations. We are pleased to announcethat the Markin-Flanagan writer-in-residence, Melanie Little, will be thekeynote speaker for this event.

Abstracts for creative pieces should be approximately 250 words long.Creative pieces should be between a maximum of 10-15 minutes in length(including preliminary remarks) and may take the form of poetry, shortfiction, or creative non-fiction. All abstract submissions will be vettedby a committee.

We encourage a wide interpretation of this theme.

Creative Paper Proposals must be submitted by January 20th. Approvedpanelists will be contacted by early February. Papers should be submittedby email to freeexchange_at_hotmail.com

De-centering the Urban Centre: Traces of Empire in the Contemporary Novel

By the end of the nineteenth century, London had become the world=92slargest city and, many scholars will argue, the greatest. According toJohn Clement Ball, =93=91London=92 served as a metonym for imperial poweritself; its point of origin, the place where the empire was built andaround which it evolved.=94 Recently, several novels turn to the high poin=tof British imperialism, inspired by, or based on, artifacts from this era:letters, journals, historical records, photographs, or newspaperspreviously outside, or on the periphery of, dominant imperial history.Conversely there are contemporary novels that re-present the colonizer=92sobjects; for example, as Ball investigates, in Arundhati Roy=92s The God o=fSmall Things, the gift that Sophie Mol gives each of her Indian cousinsis a souvenir pen from London bearing the images of Buckingham Palace andBig Ben.

Artifacts not only inform the writing of historical novels but appear as=93traces=94 within them. As a consequence, while readers may expect to rea=dfiction, they will also unwittingly encounter histories previouslyexcluded from literature. This panel seeks papers that investigatecontemporary postcolonial novels that juxtapose historical documentationwith the fictional commentary that the writer creates in order to mediatethe past. How do current subversive literary representations of London orother large urban centers, as a capital City and an imperial Centre,reconfigure our understanding of the postcolonial present?

Possible topics:

-=09Traces and Re-presentations of the city and/or Imperialism inContemporary Postcolonial Novels-=09Traces and Re-presentations of the city and/or Imperialism inContemporary American Novels-=09Traces and Re-presentations of the city and/or Imperialism inContemporary Novels-=09Re-presentations of a particular social, cultural or historical moment,or event, in nineteenth century cities-=09How the age of the Internet, of information and hybridity, has change=dthe writing of historical novels-=09The changing nature of author/ity in contemporary historical novels

Papers should be between 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts are due 25January, 2006. The conference will be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary in Calgary, AB, Canada. Please submit 250-wordabstracts to: Robyn Read rjread_at_ucalgary.ca

Decoding Desire: The Revolutionary Potential of Desire

The term jouissance has no English equivalent, however theorists fromRoland Barthes to Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida to Luce Irigaray use theterm to indicate a certain kind of pleasure. While Barthes uses the termto refer to a cultural enjoyment of identity and the ego, the so-calledFrench feminists have taken jouissance to refer to the disruptivepotential of female sexuality. How can introductions of jouissance intothe public area work to create social change? Is capitalism merely adesiring machine, as Deleuze and Guattari suggest? Or can desireproductively disrupt the existing social order?

This panel is concerned with disruptive desire in all its manifestations:how can=97and does=97desire interrupt the rigid structures of life and text=?

Possible paper topics may include:-=09Feminist renderings of desire-=09The relation between language and erotic drives-=09Psychoanalytic readings of desire-=09Experimental or performative writing as enacting desire-=09The absence of desire

Papers should be between 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts are due 25January, 2006. The conference will be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary in Calgary, AB, Canada. Please submit 250-wordabstracts to: Erin Wunker freeexchange_at_hotmail.com

L=92avenir: Jacques Derrida and the Unknown Other to ComeNo justice . . . seems possible or thinkable without the principle of someresponsibility, beyond all living present, within that which disjoins theliving present, before the ghosts of those who are not yet born or who arealready dead, be they victims of wars, political or other kinds ofviolence, nationalist, racist, colonialist, sexist, or other kinds ofexterminations, victims of the oppressions of capitalist imperialism orany of the forms of totalitarianism.Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx.In Specters of Marx, Derrida argues that there must be a way of thinkingof the absent other beyond the metaphysics of absence and presence=97a wayof thinking in a beyond where presence includes the spectral forces of thenot quite present: the past other, the future other, the altogetherother. Much of Jacques Derrida=92s later work addresses the politics ofimagining, awaiting, enabling the coming of an absolutely unknown other.Whether it be the evasive other of diff=E9rance, the disruptive other of th=esupplement, the haunting other of the trace, the constitutive other ofpsychoanalysis, or the unknown other of the messianic, the other plays animportant role in much of Derrida=92s theories. This panel seeks to discus=sthe role of the other in Derrida=92s writings. Papers are invited on thefunction of the other within any of Derrida=92s theories.

Please submit paper proposals or full papers, along with a 50 word bio, toBrett Parker at bdparker_at_ucalgary.ca Please keep in mind thatpresentations should be between 15 and 20 minutes.

Narratives of (un) Belonging/ Diasporic Writings

Changes in the world over the last few decades have refocused attention onthe displaced person or the migrant; people dispossessed and separatedfrom their identity and history. This experience has to been viewed in thecontext of a new global economy characterized by complex, interacting anddisjunctive transnational flows. The conjunction of this historical momentwith both the emergence of a diasporised generation of hyphenated writers(Asian-American, Black-British and so on) and the theoretical developmentsof post-modernism and post-colonial theory necessitates an exploration ofwhat Stuart Hall has called, =93new ethnicities: identities that aresomewhere in-between.=94A way to focus on these issues is to examine migrant writing, both fictionas well as non-fiction where each textual journey over multiple ethnic,linguistic, cultural, national and political-economic borders has to bearticulated with the historical and contemporary journey of the exile,immigrant and the refugee. Even when the experience is that of those bornin the migrated space, the narratives constructs journeys of displacement,alienation, pain and loss.

Suggested topics:1.=09Memory and silence in migrant writing/ fiction2.=09Hybridity in diasporic writing3.=09Home/ homelessness as the trope of migrant fiction4.=09Race, nation and identity5.=09Hyphenated identities6.=09Migrant writing as =91writing back=927.=09Refugee narratives/ narratives of dislocation/ forced exile8.=09Geopolitical transformations in/made through diasporic writing.9.=09Imaginary homelandsPapers should be between 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts are due 25January, 2006. The conference will be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary in Calgary, AB, Canada. Please submit 250-wordabstracts to: Navneet Kumar nkumar_at_ucalgary.ca

And so techniques of experimental film transform into the basic grammar ofrock videos. Disney colonizes hybridity with movies such as Lilo & Stitch.Like hippies-turned-stockbrokers, will today=92s culturejammers becometomorrow=92s brand managers?

This panel invites proposals for papers, or creative works of prose poetryor performance, that explore the domestication of discontent. Length: 20minutes. You are encouraged to consider any historical period in any areaof study of the humanities or social sciences. Topics of interest mightinclude but are not limited to:

Papers should be between 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts are due 25January, 2006. The conference will be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary in Calgary, AB, Canada. Please submit 250-wordabstracts to: W. Mark Giles wmgiles_at_telus.net_____Work Cited

All Past, Future Tense: Contemporary Approaches to Early Modern Studies

=93At what point does theory cease to be theoretical? When does a politicalchallenge to the established order lose its radical nature because, to agreater or lesser, extent, it has become the establishment it onceconfronted?=94-Andrew Hadfield, =93Shakespeare and republicanism: history and culturalMaterialism=94

Cultural Materialism, New Historicism and the raft of theoreticalapproaches to the Early Modern period that emerged from the nexus oftheory and literature in the early 1980s have come under increasingattacks over the past few years. The representation of these theoreticalapproaches as =93ossified, predictable and institutionalized=94 is vehement=lyopposed by those who argue for the continued use Cultural Materialist andNew Historicist theoretical modes, given the present political climate.Others note the failure of the political impetus behind these movements toeffect any appreciable change in their respective countries of origin as asign of their poverty as approaches to literature.

This panel solicits papers addressing the future of Early Modern criticismgiven the contested space of the predominant theoretical approaches toEarly Modern texts. If the theoretical approaches that were crafted inthe early 1980s are on the wane, then what comes next? Are they on thewane at all, or, given Stephen Greenblatt=92s new biography of Shakespeare,are they simply turning to address a different audience? What,fundamentally, are we studying when we approach Shakespeare & hiscontemporaries through the New Historicist/Cultural Materialist model?

Papers should be between 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts are due 25January, 2006. The conference will be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary in Calgary, AB, Canada. Please submit 250-wordabstracts to: Andrew Bretz free.exchange_at_gmail.comOR If you wish to use snail mail, please send your hard copy to:Free Exchange Committeec/o The Department of EnglishUniversity of CalgarySocial Sciences Tower, 11th floor2500 University DriveCalgary, Alberta, CanadaT2N 1N4Making Media: The Social Responsibility of Experimental ArtMarshall McLuhan wrote that =93in experimental art, men are given the exactspecifications of coming violence to their own psyches from their owncounter-irritants or technology=94 (Understanding Media 71). The socialresponsibility that McLuhan places upon the experimental artist has beentaken up by practitioners in various disciplines, evident in theproduction of experimental work highlighting the process and circumstancesof its construction. Despite the volume and depth of such work,experimental art has been largely ignored by mainstream culture.Increasingly, all media is subsumed into the overarching superstructure ofthe Internet, the social effects of which are only beginning to beunderstood.

Paper proposals are being accepted for a panel concerning the socialresponsibility of experimental art, with a focus on the relationshipbetween art and technology. Possible topics include (but are not limitedto):

-the role of experimental art in advancing understanding of new media andits social effects-public resistance to experimental art-the avant-garde in relation to technology-the possibilities the Internet offers in the production or distributionof art-the responsibility of the experimental artist to predict, examine, andinsulate the public against the =93coming violence=94 of new technology

Papers should be between 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts are due 25January, 2006. The conference will be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary in Calgary, AB, Canada. Please submit 250-wordabstracts to: Jonathan Ball jonathan_at_jonathanball.com.

The Future of Modernism, in a Time, where Literature is No Longer the Cente=r

There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not theslightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of time is eatingus away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves.The hero, then, is not Time, but Timelessness. We must get in step, alock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape.

=09Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Much of high modernism, from Joyce to Stein to Hemmingway, develops out ofa faith in the ability of literature to act as a cultural centre that isable to interrogate the disjunction of the present and performrealignments of our forms of social organization. Much of the modernistavant-garde, relies on the possibility that art is able to shock theunthinking masses into a state of hyper-thought. However, in a time,where high modernism is no longer high and where the avant-garde is nolonger avant-hier, in a time, where the high-minded cultural superiorityof high art is displaced and the shock of the never before is underminedby a proliferation of images, the future of modernism as modernism isuncertain. And, yet, amidst this turn away from the modern as modern, thestudy of modernism is characterized by a withdrawal into the archives,where the tedious details of life in modernism are privileged as newtwists to tired studies.

Papers are invited for a panel on the future of modernism. What is thefuture of teaching modernism? Is there a future of modernism outside theacademy? What is the use of a high modernism that is no longer high or anavant-garde that is no longer avant-hier? Is there a beyond to the returnto the archive?

Please submit paper proposals or full papers, along with a 50 word bio, toBrett Parker at bdparker_at_ucalgary.ca by 25 January, 2006. Please keep inmind that presentations should be between 15 and 20 minutes.

Whatever Else? Is Poetry Freedom?

Uncertainty about the future (to say nothing of the past) has plaguedpoets and philosophers since Plato. In the canonical memory, themodernists articulated this dis-ease most definitively=97their time andworks marked boldly by global strife, political violence, and the brokenpromises of older generations. What then can be said of our own age=97our20th and 21st centuries, which, with their unprecedented military andxenophobic barbarity, have proven the legitimacy of Pound, Eliot, andAuden=92s terrified distress? Has poetry indeed made nothing happen?Whatever else, is poetry still freedom? Have our global and national poetssince WWII given up hope amidst the charred rubble of theapproaching/passed millennium? The nations of the globe have recentlybared their guns again, and the poets of those nations have surelyreacted. Haven=92t they?

This panel seeks abstracts for papers that will imbricate the spirit ofthese questions and mis-facts=97papers that will elucidate, highlight, deny=,affirm, or suggest that the textuality and performance of poetry is stillable to address contemporary social, national or global issues whileallowing some room for positive negotiation into the future. Papers takingup the work of poets from the late modernists to the avant-garde arewelcomed, all in hopes of rearticulating hope.

Possible topics and questions=85

-the physicality of books vs. online works-the dissolution of nationalism in the face of globalization-the dissolution of globalism in the face of neo-nationalism-the impossible escape from realism/reality-historical appropriation-the politics of public poetry- spoken word, performance, visual, and sound-the influence of the avant-garde-the denial or engagement of postmodernism-the survival/decimation of the lyric-protest poetry-the politics of language/language of politics-the maintenance/moderation of staid poetics

Papers should be between 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts are due 25January, 2006. The conference will be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary in Calgary, AB, Canada. Please submit 250-wordabstracts to: Owen Percy odfpercy_at_ucalgary.ca

Creative Writing Pedagogy: Imagination, Invention and ImplementationThis year, Professor Tom Wayman introduced a pilot graduate course at theUniversity of Calgary in creative writing pedagogy. Part of Wayman=92srational for starting the course was that many writers in Canada earntheir living as teachers. Thus the seminar was designed to teach graduatestudents who were also creative writers how to organize and manageintroductory creative writing workshops, and provided an opportunity foreach student to teach a section of a three genre introduction to creativewriting course: poetry, fiction or scriptwriting.This panel calls for papers about the teaching concerns of creativewriting instructors; how does a creative writer adapt his or her writingphilosophy into a teaching platform that will achieve long termpedagogical goals?Possible topics can range from syllabus and curriculum design, workshopmanagement and writing exercises, to an analysis or comparison of creativewriting textbooks and how they can be adapted for classroom use=97forexample, Stephen Minot=92s Three Genres: The Writing of Poetry, Fiction andDrama or Janet Burroway=92s, Imaginative Writing: The Element of Craft. Thi=spanel is designed to generate discussion about the challenges encounteredin the classroom, potential solutions, and the personal interests andinvestments in the art of creative writing that drives the teaching of thediscipline.Papers should be between 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts are due 25January, 2006. The conference will be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary in Calgary, AB, Canada. Please submit 250-wordabstracts to: Robyn Read rjread_at_ucalgary.caThe Future of Resistance: The Postmodern, The Postcolonial, and Beyond

The politics of theory conceived as a form of social activism will alwaysbe that it intervenes in a particular institutional, social or culturalframework against the presuppositions or politics of its adversary. Oncethat context has passed, or been changed, then for the most part, thepolitical impact of a strategic intervention is lost. Theories also havea history, and must be historically situated if their politics are to beunderstood.

=09Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction.

In much recent writing the rigid distinction between the postmodern andthe postcolonial is called into question. Here, the future ofpoststructural thought, postmodern art, and postcolonial politics can befound in the coming together of the micropolitics of the postmodern andthe macropolitics of the postcolonial. That is, the post-Enlightenmenttradition that culminates in the postmodern deconstruction of essentialism(of self, race, gender, god) and the post-Enlightenment tradition thatculminates in the postcolonial challenge to the persistence of culturaland material inequalities are brought together to undo both theessentialist politics of the postcolonial and the contortionist politicsof the postmodern. In turn, the coming together of the postmodern and thepostcolonial opens up a space in which the recognition of an unjustpolitical, material, cultural reality can develop into a multifaceted,diverse, and active offensive on the complex network of power relations,which work to maintain the status quo of any particular moment.Papers are invited on the politics of blurring the boundaries between thepostmodern and the postcolonial. What is the critical resistance of thetheory, the novel, the play, the poem, the short story, thenonfiction-prose of the future present?

Please submit paper proposals or full papers, along with a 50 word bio, toBrett Parker at bdparker_at_ucalgary.ca by 25 January. Please keep in mindthat presentations should be between 15 and 20 minutes.

Borders of Becoming: Women writing Woman

Gilles Deleuze posits that Woman is a privileged sign of Otherness withinwestern discourse: =93there are as many sexes as there are terms insymbiosis=85they cannot be understood in terms of production, only in termsof becoming=94 (A Thousand Plateaus 242). Deleuze goes on to suggest thatthese lines of deterritiorialization are ways of loosening constrainingconcepts of sexuality. Rosi Briadotti, among other feminists, has arguedthat this concept is highly important to feminist discourse. This panelis concerned with issued of border-crossing in feminist discourse. Can theconcept of Woman as priviledged other be taken up in a useful manner, oris this a misguided phallogocentric commentary? How do women take upissues of identity and otherness, whether through writing, performance, oractivism? Can the feminist project of deconstructing phallogocentrism takeinto account the material reality of the multiplicities of women=92s lives?

Papers should be between 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts are due 25January, 2006. The conference will be held on March 10th and 11th at theUniversity of Calgary in Calgary, AB, Canada. Please submit 250-wordabstracts to: Erin Wunker freeexchange_at_hotmail.com